It is believed that most will agree that hanging wallpaper is a chore which is not easy to master by the householder who elects to hang it himself. It involves handling a relatively long piece of sometimes flimsy paper material which must be wet on one side and then applied to a wall with the paper in a precise orientation.
It has long been recognized that some form of holding device is desirable, and a fairly recent suggestion of one is contained in U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,547. The device of this patent is T-shaped, and a sheet of paper to be hung is draped over a guide edge and drawn back a rather substantial distance and clamped by a clamp on the handle of the device. It is then used by making an initial contact at a point on the wall substantially down from the ceiling, and thereafter releasing the clamp holding the end of the paper and pushing upward on the device until the paper is brought up to the ceiling. Clearly, this device eases the problem of hanging paper when compared with hanging it without mechanical aid. However, there are still problems which are unsolved with this device.
First, since contact is made without reference to the ceiling, the precise point on a wall to make an initial contact to enable the paper on the device to just reach the ceiling is not easy. In doing this, the paper is first aligned at the bottom edge of a wall, a rather substantial distance below where the contact on the wall is to be made using the device. Thus, if as suggested in the patent the handle is between two and four feet long, then the user must be making a contact with the wall four to six feet above the reference bottom edge, a rather difficult feat.
In general, the attempt to employ the bottom edge as a reference and work upward, or possibly work upward and downward, is both unconventional and unwieldy. It is most difficult to use one edge as a reference and start smoothing from a different one, in this case, the mid point region. Further, in attempting to work from bottom to top, it becomes most essential that the paper be cut to a precise length, else either one is short at the top, or there may be an overage at the top. If the latter occurs when the device is moved away, the paper will tend to drape down and pull away from the wall.
Accordingly, it is the object of this invention to provide an improved paper hanging method which avoids the problems discussed and enables a downward smoothing of the paper from the very top of a wall to the bottom, permitting a more convenient application of wallpaper to a wall, and, accordingly, a more precise hanging of wallpaper with less expertise.